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Climate Change & Conservation eNews

Wildife

Duck
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Migratory birds can partially offset climate change

A new study demonstrates that birds can partially compensate for climate change by delaying the start of spring migration and completing the journey faster. But the strategy comes with a cost — a decline in overall survival. The findings by researchers from Cornell University, the University of Maryland, and Georgetown University are published in the journal Ecology.

“Understanding how animals can compensate is an important part of understanding where the impacts of climate change will play out,” said Marra. “In this case, we may not lose a species entirely, but it is possible that populations of some species may go extinct locally due to climate change…

“The good news is that birds are able to respond to changes in their environment,” Dossman said. “They have some flexibility and variation in their behaviors to begin with, but the question is, have they reached the limit of their ability to respond to climate change?”…

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Songbird
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Climate change presents a mismatch for songbirds’ breeding season

Sometimes it seems like climate change is an abstract concept — yet for birds, it's getting increasingly real. You can share articles like this and talk about how transitioning to compatible renewables is more important than ever, for the birds — and for others.

Spring is the sweet spot for breeding songbirds in California’s Central Valley — not too hot, not too wet. But climate change models indicate the region will experience more rainfall during the breeding season, and days of extreme heat are expected to increase. Both changes threaten the reproductive success of songbirds, according to a study from the University of California, Davis…

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Blackbird
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Biodiversity safeguards bird communities under a changing climate

A new study shows that North American bird communities containing functionally diverse species have changed less under climate change during the past 50 years than functionally simple communities.

Community-level diversity works as a buffer against negative climate change impacts, especially during winter, i.e the season that has shown strongest climatic warming across the Northern Hemisphere.

On the other hand, biodiversity played a smaller role during the breeding season. Indeed, earlier studies have shown that bird communities change faster during winter than summer, which explains this pattern…

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Cardinals
Pixabay

Climate change, habitat loss (and, yes, even cats) pose a greater threat to birds than windmills

This piece was written in consultation with Dr. Brian Weeks, Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability. Weeks is an evolutionary ecologist who studies how bird species and communities have responded to environmental change.

Research quantifying the full scale of wind turbine activity’s impact upon birds both through their migratory patterns and killed by collision with wind turbines is a matter of current scientific studies. It is important to quantify these impacts, but it is also important to acknowledge that these impacts are certainly negligible compared to other drivers of bird mortality.

The number of birds killed by wind turbine collisions per year is estimated to be between 150,000 and 500,000, but when you put this number in perspective, it pales in comparison to other causes of bird mortality…

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3-billions-birds-lost

Nearly 3 billion birds gone

Watch this a short video by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology about findings on North America’s steep bird declines.

The first-ever comprehensive assessment of net population changes in the U.S. and Canada reveals across-the-board declines that scientists call “staggering.” All told, the North American bird population is down by 2.9 billion breeding adults, with devastating losses among birds in every biome. Forests alone have lost 1 billion birds. Grassland bird populations collectively have declined by 53%, or another 720 million birds.

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Bird
Dopeyden / Getty Images stock

Just hearing or seeing birds can boost our mental health, new report suggests

Birds can be a catalyst for climate action. Renewable energy is going to be critical for bird survival; we can help people understand the importance by connecting to what they care about.

“Our main finding is that there is a time-lasting association between seeing or hearing birds and improved mental well-being,” said the study’s lead author, Ryan Hammoud, a PhD candidate and a research assistant at the institute of psychiatry and psychology and neuroscience at King’s College London…

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Bee
Getty Images

Climate change is ratcheting up the pressure on bees

UC Davis notes the impact of climate change on domesticated and native bees. Researchers are also working to understand how soil pesticides affect ground-nesting wild bees, which represent over 70% of the U.S. native bee population.

Drought conditions in the western U.S. in 2021 dried up bee forage — the floral nectar and pollen that bees need to produce honey and stay healthy. And extreme rain in the Northeast limited the hours that bees could fly for forage.

In both cases, managed colonies — hives that humans keep for honey production or commercial pollination – were starving…

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Bees Nest
Holly Holt, PhD/Penn State

Nests are bee nurseries

Check out this interesting research from Penn State about found or created bee nests.

Female bees build nests to protect their offspring from bad weather, predators, parasites and disease. Bees nest in cavities that they either find or create. Each of the 4,000 bee species found in North America has a unique life history and nesting preferences. Most North American bee species (>70%) nest underground. Ground nesting bees dig tunnels or look for abandoned holes made by other animals. Other bee species prefer to nest aboveground. Females look for hollow twigs, chew tunnels in dead logs or take advantage of preexisting burrows left by wood-boring beetles. Some species search for naturally occurring crevices in stones and trees and will even occupy pinecones or empty snail shells!

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Ground Nesting Bee
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A common soil pesticide cut wild bee reproduction by 89% – here’s why scientists are worried

It's important to be aware that, for some species, soils with pesticides are threatening extinction. "Protecting honeybees from pesticides is already difficult. For wild bees which forage and nest among a wide variety of crops worldwide, it may be impossible."

When you think of bees, a hive humming with activity probably comes to mind. But most of the world’s 20,000 bee species don’t call a hive home. These wild species lead solitary lives instead, and around 70% of them build nests underground where they raise their offspring on the nectar they gather from flowers.

Incredibly, almost all scientific understanding of how pesticides affect bees has came from testing domesticated honeybees, and, more recently, bumblebees. That’s largely because these species tend to be easier to work with in lab conditions. How non-social bees cope with these chemicals is largely understudied, despite them making up the vast majority of bee species worldwide.

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Shorebirds
Davis Ranches

Climate patterns thousands of miles away affect US bird migration

Bird migration in the U.S. is monitored in the context of four “flyways” or principle migration routes, two in the east and two in the west. The new research digs into the timing of environmental cues, such as temperature and weather patterns, that prompt birds to travel along their flyway.

The scientists analyzed 23 years of bird migration data collected via NOAA’s Next Generation Radar system — a network of 143 radar stations across the continental U.S. — to determine the variability in the birds’ arrival times each spring. This is where they made their first discovery: the U.S. could be divided into two regions, east and west, each with a distinct pattern of variability in bird arrival times…

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